Officer's private car?? Bulford c1914

[Moonraker]

The vendor described this card as showing a staff car, but it's a two-seater and I suspect that it was the driver's private vehicle. (Pity we can't see the registration plate, which might have given a clue.) Other photos of "staff cars" on Salisbury Plain that I've seen have shown four-seaters. I hesitated before purchasing because from the low-quality scan it looked as if there might be a large blemish at the top of the hill, with the trees looking like letters that had been "blotted" from another card. Then I found in my collection a card of the same spot showing the same vegetation  - and sports events in 1916.  I think that the location  is several hundred yards north-east of where the Bulford Kiwi was carved in 1919.

I would welcome confirmation - or otherwise - of my idea that the car was probably privately owned, and suggestions as to its make.

[Gareth Davies]

I can’t comment on the car but yes, your location comments are spot on.

[Chasemuseum]

Looking at the mascot on the radiator it appears to be a "Vulcan". The UK company (Southport) not the USA company (Ohio).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(motor_vehicles)

The Vulcan radiator mascot is the god "Vulcan" as a blacksmith standing beside an anvil, holding a hammer in one hand with a wheel in the other, resting on the anvil

 

1910 example of 15hp car - note vertical fire wall - Museum of Liverpool

Later but still prewar model with bull nose radiator and shaped junction from the bonnet hiding the vertical fire wall

[Chasemuseum]

Very likely a Vulcan

1911 15hp model sold in 2013

https://www.historics.co.uk/buying/auctions/2013-11-30/car/1911-vulcan/

 

[MikeyH]

The Vulcan works at Crossens on the outskirts of Southport, was a very impressive and extensive building erected in 1907.  The last remnants were demolished as recently as 2020.  A chum and I went for a look around in the latter 1960's, we were able to get in some of the buildings, but nothing remained of any Vulcan significance.  Other parts of the site were still in use at the time.  The 'blacksmith' radiator mascots came in two sizes a large version for commercial vehicles, and a small one for cars.  At a classic car event last Sunday, there was a nice example of the car mascot on sale at £285.00.

Mike.

Edited 16 February , 2023 by MikeyH

[Moonraker]

Thanks for those very helpful comments.

Gareth: I walked along the top of the hillside last autumn. And I used to enjoy cycling along the Tidworth-Bulford road. (The terrain would have been ideal to link the Bulford and Tidworth railway lines A 1904 atlas of railway lines used by the Railway Clearing House) shows a projected link that This never materialised, though on May 13, 1907, Richard Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, admitted in the House of Commons that in bad weather it was preferable to take the "high road" route of eight miles between the two barracks rather than the four-mile track connecting them; he noted that the journey by train was 26 miles. A rail connection would have been easy to lay over flat ground, but instead the track was improved.)

Between 1903 and 1914 only five Vulcans were registered to people in Wiltshire, all civilians.  Most officers, being more peripatetic, would have purchased and registered their cars elsewhere.